How is your response time to the various channels of inbound requests to your business? Do you follow up quickly or not quickly enough? What are some of the best practices in this area?
Overall, the more consistent you are with follow up, the better.
Productivity Tip: If you are the sole practitioner, it’s important to set up notifications or a daily checklist. If you’re working with a team, delegate this task to someone else.
Once you have your system in place, consistently sticking to the system will yield results over the long-term. Below are some great tools you can utilize to aid you in your follow-up process: MailChimp Zapier Intercom ConvertKit Constant Contact
At the end of the day, all that matters is that no lead is left unattended or uncontacted.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Elder Law Growth Podcast! We are on a mission to help elder law and estate planning firms grow their practices through digital marketing so they can help create a lasting legacy for families everywhere. No one should pass away without a solid plan in place and everyone should be able to age with dignity.
My name is Dan Hafner and I will be your host for this podcast. I want to thank you all for joining whether this is your first time with us or you have tuned into an episode previously, welcome to the show!
Today’s topic is lead follow up and the best practices. This applies to any assets you have in the digital and non-digital space. The more of those assets you have the more potential leads or prospective clients you can have.
There are going to be different response times depending on how people contact you. Whether they call, fill out a form, or walk into your office. If they call or walk in this is pretty self explanatory the response time is going to be fairly quick. The online side is where people can struggle because people can get ahead of themselves and have too many ways people can contact you. So we are going to talk about best practices in the online space.
The first recommendation we have is to set up tasks or reminders, a system so you are alerted right away when someone is trying to contact you. Make sure you are monitoring your Facebook messages or your contact forms. If you have a team and want to delegate this to someone have them manage monitoring all of the channels.
The most important thing is to not let anyone fall through the cracks because those are missed opportunities. If you are on your own or even if you do take advantage of automation tools that will send you an email when a new lead comes in. The key is to be notified when you are getting digital online leads.
How we do this for our client is set up automations whenever someone fills out a form it sends an email to let our client know that someone subscribes or downloaded a document, whatever it might be. You want to make sure everything is captured, like their emails and phone numbers. Once you have a system in place for notification the next step is how do you follow up.
Of course, as quickly as possible, the window we suggest is a window of five to fifteen minutes. We understand everyone is busy so it’s easy for someone to see the contact come in but forget to respond. A quick response is best. This is another place you can use automations. You can set up an email automatically be sent after someone becomes a contact. So it looks like you are actually there.
They are easy to do but will strengthen your business image. Delegating this to automation and technology is key. Many firms stop here, they only leave it to the one follow up email or call. That’s not a winning strategy. In the sales world they say it takes anywhere from five to thirteen contacts before they actually buy.
Of course, make sure you are following online and state laws but adding people who contact you to your newsletter is the best thing you can do. All of the ways people can contact you should funnel down into one list, for many people this is their email list. As long as you provide people the option to opt out this is typically okay, but make sure to follow your state laws.
It’s a long game and this is a great opportunity to play that. You just have to continue to get in front of those people who might be your potential clients. Whether that is text messages, emails, or phone calls doing it consistently and in a logical and systematic manner will yield more results in the long run.
The quick follow up within five to fifteen minutes is key and then having everyone who becomes a contact funnel into your contact list so they can be consistently communicated with and exposed to your brand.
If you would like any additional information check us out at bambiz.net. The key is to have a short and long-term follow-up plan. We highly encourage using automation to help be consistent with your follow-ups. It’s rare that someone walks into your office and decides to set up their estate plan the same day. Those people you are communicating with might become a client in three or six months. These are some of the best follow up practices we share with our clients.
That’s all for this episode, as always I appreciate you joining. You can always check out bambiz.net or elderlawgrowthpodcast.com for more information and show notes. Please subscribe if you haven’t already. We appreciate any reviews or shares to anyone you know who might benefit from our content. Join us next week for another episode. It’s been a pleasure, Dan Hafner signing off. Talk to you next time.
